TD Economic Forecast for Canada

October 5, 2009

What a difference a year makes. I have just returned from the Re/Max fall conference and one of the guest speakers was Craig Alexander, a SVP & Deputy Chief Economist. The short version of his presentation was that the worst is over and “the recovery is for real and worries about a double-dip will likely prove unfounded. “ The key conclusions seem to be that unemployment will continue to rise in the short term but not for much longer, interest rates will remain in there same spot for most of 2010 and even when they go up they will do so slowly, house prices will stabilize in most parts of Canada and even rise in some markets and the Canadian dollar will reach parity with the US dollar and stay at that level for some time. It appears that it will be a very slow recovery but one that has already started due strong consumer spending related to some of the stimulus programs started by the Governments that I mentioned previously.